Turkey

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and since nobody celebrates it here, I decided to make my own, only that Friday, naturally, because my decision to "cook a turkey", as my husband CC puts it, was intelligently made very late at night that Thursday and I have no patience and move like a insane fish when I've got an endeavor.

We went out and bought a 14 pound turkey at Walmart and I downloaded a recipe off Epicurious. We informed everyone of the Thanksgiving dinner that would be held the next night and of course I blew it up and made it a huge deal, biggest party of the year.

I came home and excitedly started to brine my turkey. I was following the directions from my recipe, but mid-brine process, something just didn't feel right. I trusted my killer instincts and went and called my Mom, who laughed at me and asked me if I bought my turkey frozen. Appalled, I said yes, and added that just because I am in Mexico does not mean that we buy all of our meat straight out of the slaughterhouse. We do have supermarkets, and nice ones, I said. She laughed again and said, "No, it's just that it takes 3-4 days to defrost a turkey. You can't have your Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, sweetie."

So I had to WAIT. It's excruciating to have to wait for something, and at that point I hated turkey and thanksgiving and was already on to something else, WRITING A MYSTERY NOVEL like Patricia Highsmith or Paul Auster, specifically Paul Aster because I just started "City of Glass" and it's inspired me.

It's about a man named Quinn who is a writer of mystery novels. Quinn accidentally becomes involved in a mystery himself when he answers the phone and it's people looking for Paul Auster to do some detective work, and he accepts, to make his life more exciting, and impersonates his own character that he's created for his mystery novels, Max Work, who is a private eye, but at the same time pretending to be Paul Auster, the person who really writes about him. So cool.

Anyway, since I invited the whole world to my in-law's house for Thanksgiving dinner, I had to make the turkey, so I was obligated to go all out on it once it defrosted (on SUNDAY). Turns out that I make the world's best turkey. OH and I started a tradition. I also made a new tradition with my mashed potatoes with Manchego cheese and chipotle, which is my own creation.





(It's waving hello!)

Research

I just got back from getting coffee at Italian Coffee Company. I got an espresso and started putting the top on it and accidentally knocked it over all over the front counter. I started apologizing and even helped clean up a little bit and kept saying "Perdon, perdon, disculpame" like an idiot, and NOBODY said anything, not ONE person said a thing, like, it's ok, or, don't worry, or, I hate you... nothing. They just shot nasty looks at me out of the corners of their eyes with their mouths shut in tight little straight lines. The manager lady did ask me if I got burned, but when I said "oh no, not at all, I just feel so sorry that I knocked over that coffee" she averted her eyes and said nothing else. The employees at Italian Coffee Company need a seminar in "How to Make a Person Feel Nice While Buying Coffee and not GUILTY about BEING ALIVE" and "How Feeling Great to be Alive in Italian Coffee Company Promotes Comsumer Loyalty".

OH-- and THEN since everyone was so busy ignoring my empty drink, I asked the girl if she would make me another one, and she said yes, and then the manager charged me for it. and since I was already feeling guilty about being alive and all, I paid.

I forget... but I think in Starbucks or anywhere that sells coffee in the US will get you another espresso if you spill it all over the counter, free of charge, right? I mean, now I don't want to go back there because of the bad experience and the way that the goddamn baristas made me feel all suicidal and all, and for just a smile and a "no problem" and a free refill for being an idiot would have made me a customer for life.

But maybe that was the point. After all, the baristas there don't rake it in, so whats one less troublesome customer to them? Less work, and I don't blame them.

I wonder if it is possible that they pick up on the fact that when I see them I feel sorry for them that they're working at such a shitty job at shittier wages, and the guilt I feel that I'm not working at anything and that I do whatever I want all day everyday. I wake up when I want to and I have no real responsibilities.

Maybe they pick up on that and that's why I get treated poorly wherever I go... perhaps. I did notice that if I act like a bitch I get better customer service, whereas if I treat them nicely I get treated like a bitch. Odd... Needs more research. The Research shows that I'm right, thus far.

Cultural Etiquette Lesson for the Day: Why the Statement "invite all your computer programming friends" is Morally Wrong

In parts of the English-speaking world and in the entire Eastern European country of Bulgaria, popular culture has deemed it taboo to speak in wide, sweeping generalizations about people who are known to Hax0r the planet on a regular basis. Therefore, the statement "invite all your computer programmer friends" is a sickening display of demeaning insensibility, because in it you assume that the person in question has programmer friends, just because he hax0rs the planet all the time, which may not be necessarily true. It also suggests that the said Hax0r has a boring life, which he most likely does not, although that he might not should never be determined, either, as it is in itself yet another disgusting assumption of the worst kind.

Remember, when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME.

Stealing

It has come to my attention that crime is steadily seeping out of the Distrito Federal and into the lovely city in which I live at a rapid pace. Today on the nearest main street from my home, two men held a car up that was sitting in traffic and demanded that one of the passengers give him his watch. Rumor has it that it was a Rolex, which I HIGHLY doubt. But anyway, the guy said No, and they responded by shooting him twice, I'm not sure where, and then they ripped his watch off of his wrist. The guy driving the car tried following the guys but when the coldblooded culprits realized that they were being tracked, they shot at them and the robbed and bloody people stopped their chase and the perpetraitors got away with their fake Rolex, free and clear.

My car was stolen outside of my apartment complex here two years ago in the middle of the night. The surveillance cameras captured a funny video of it being stolen and leaving the street in fast motion but the video failed to show the perp's face or even his figure. It was partially my own fault because I left it out on the street in front instead of in the underground parking lot. Luckily the car was only used as a getaway car or something because the police found it unscathed and abandoned in the middle of nowhere about six months later. They probably had something to do with it, but I don't care, because it was returned.

I am now banned from giving pesos to beggars or their children while stopped in traffic or to accept flyers from anyone or to have my windows down at all or to wear any of my Rolexes when I drive.

Reincarnation

I thought long and hard about reincarnation last night, and as everyone else who has ever thought about it, I had fun flattering myself over and over as I tried to figure out who I used to be. Exhilirating, yet exhausting. I must have suffered greatly, because I don't suffer in this lifetime. Sometimes I wish I did, then I'd have something to write about.

It came down to this: I was either Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Jean Rhys, or James Baldwin. I most definitely was not Tolstoy, or Jane Austen, or a Bronte. And I most definitely was not anything but a literary genius.How great does it feel to tell yourself that you matter as a writer, in any way you possibly can? When the little voice that never dies trashes what you know is good and denounces it as hopeless, doesn't it help to shut it up by shoving the fact that you were once Ernest Hemingway in its ugly little face? After all, any reincarnate of any literary genius is still a literary genius. Everyone knows that.